


The Fathoms Below: First Stanza

by KIBITZER



Series: The Fathoms Below [1]
Category: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni | Higurashi When They Cry, Umineko no Naku Koro ni | When the Seagulls Cry
Genre: Alternate Universe - Higurashi is a Gameboard, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Mom Stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-03-09 12:54:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13481907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KIBITZER/pseuds/KIBITZER
Summary: The apprentice stood. “It seems we no longer have an opponent.”“She has Fallen,” the Unfathomable said. “It is not the same as death—it will prove far worse. Let us read the last rites for this game.”She awoke in an off-kilter world and found it was a prison.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> ...indisputably, most of the references connecting Higurashi and Umineko are either tenuous, red herrings, or just jokes  
>  in this primal hallucinatory nightmare—i mean fic series—i will apply gameboard logic to higurashi or die trying

It happened once; in the time of titans, when witches consumed one another like stars collapsing into black holes, before anyone even thought to remember their names or write record of their wars. Great Ones fought by playing and played by fighting, and no longer dared face one another without the conceit of a game between them; they thought, surely, if they disregarded the pretexts and faced one another openly, thousands of universes would be rent asunder in the crossfire. It was better, then, to craft bespoke battlegrounds, sink their claws into one fiction to preserve the rest, and challenge their foes with puzzles spun in gold over swords wrought of iron. They were each and every one a God: capable of conjuring worlds into existence by mere thought, each world spanning hundreds of Fragments—and just as capable, then, of sinking those worlds into oblivion once they had their fill of carnage and wine-sweet blood.

Rarely was the blood drawn deep enough to kill, for animals know better than to risk one’s own life for a mere chance at another’s—they were spats over territory, over ideology, over rank, but rarely over life and death. Games of attrition and battles for entertainment were played with fictional lives, fictional worlds, fictional stakes. Among the highest orders of Creators, these intellectual wars became the finest accompaniment to black tea.

It happened in those days; when the games were young and they were too, as sly as they were foolish, as cunning as they were rash. The match was ideological in nature, a spat between old rivals who should have viewed one another with respect but who instead wore naked contempt. The setting was a simple world, a drop in the bucket, nothing but the hundredth game in their cyclical war.

The Game Master would be Lady Featherine Augustus Aurora, her challenge a simple whodunnit. Accepting the riddle as her opponent was the Unfathomable Lady of Absolute Willpower and Certainty. Should the game records be reviewed, it would seem this game should play like all previous spats between the two; it should be a brilliancy, of dramatic flair and poetic sacrifices, decided on a knife’s edge superiority.

But it was not beautiful; it was not dramatic, or poetic. It was an absolute crush victory, mere bloodsport—and was the blood ever so sweet as this? Was any game as irreverently cruel as this? Should one dare to read its record, would one still be able to taste the blood She ran over Her teeth, claws, pen and paper? Was any book as filthy with it, so pungent with the stink of torn guts and ichor, yet so intoxicating in its brutality?

To dare to view its record is sacrilege, but it did happen, once in the age of beasts born by blood.

Lady Featherine Augustus Aurora, Endless Witch of Theatergoing, Drama and Spectating, held her head high as she entered as Game Master. She presented her game with grace. She served her tea as black as night and her truths as clear as day. If she was growing weary from her millennia, she hid it.

Across the table, the truly Ravenous Witch of Absolute Certainty waited. She listened. She dissected words and scenes like it was a meal to her, teeth bared in a wolf’s grin, her blues serpentine and silk-smooth. Her apprentice was present as an observer—did that girl know what she would be made to witness? Such feats of Certainty, before her very eyes—perhaps that is expressly why she appeared.

Within a mere handful of moves, the great Lady Featherine was cornered, defeated, and butchered. The blood flowed all too gladly, baptizing the game board in a red flood of absolution, wiping it clean of its master’s fingerprints. It was a trap, set with certainty, and the ichor cascaded like rain.

It had not been easy. Indeed, someone as Ancient and Great as the Lady Featherine would not be fooled by anything less than Absolute Certainty. But prideful as she was, she displayed her weakness plainly—in a halo around her head, as if framing her face with it would blind the Ravenous Unfathomable.

(No such luck, dear Lady Featherine.)

And so, in an age that should have belonged to her, the Witch fell, and fell, and fell, until she herself became indistinguishable from the pieces she created, a mere specter, defeated.

That is the game record. The Ravenous Witch of Absolute Certainty made sure it was written down well.

To read it would be sacrilege, but perhaps, some day, Her Spectatorship will allow it to be unsealed.

(Ācta est fābula, plaudite!)

  


  


There was silence in Heaven for about half an hour. The witch and her apprentice sat, watching, as stars plummeted from the sky, streaking quiet but deadly towards the gameboard. The ocean was made bitter and the land was scorched black as logic folded in on itself, bending Featherine’s gameboard into unrecognizable shapes.

Carefully, the remaining player enunciated: “Lady Featherine. Is this your resignation?”

She rose from her seat, beholding the gameboard with guarded interest, as if any second now, Featherine would reveal the ruse and spring back into action.

“Lady Featherine. You may fix your logic error, or resign and destroy this game. Your response?”

Still nothing. A violent wind picked up on the gameboard, trashing whatever had remained clinging to life. The chair opposite the Unfathomable Witch remained empty.

At last, she dared sneer.

The apprentice stood. “It seems we no longer have an opponent.”

“She has Fallen,” the Unfathomable said. “It is not the same as death—it will prove far worse. Let us read the last rites for this game. Lambda, your declaration.”

The apprentice took her place next to the gameboard. She closed her eyes lightly, as if in prayer, before reciting the words: “As the apprentice Witch of Certainty and the impartial observer of this game, I declare that the Game Master has abandoned this game. As such, it will never be completed.” She spoke to the empty room: “The Observers in attendance may debate the fate of the gameboard. Dissolution of the board and its player contracts is possible at this point.”

“I will bargain for this gameboard,” the Unfathomable said, almost theatrical in her grace as she gestured in a wide arc toward the board below. “Its Game Master may be gone, but it is a beautiful piece of work. Let us preserve it, as it once was. The game is already over; there is no need to destroy her toys.”

As if the empty room had responded, Lambdadelta held her hands high, her palms snapping together in a single crisp clap. “Granted. The gameboard and all of its pieces will be cataloged in the Capital of Books. Furthermore, the Observers grant Lady [     ], Ravenous Witch of Absolute Certainty, the right to oversee the restoration and cataloging process.”

“I offer my thanks. This was a delicate game.”

Lambdadelta nodded. “Let it be known that this game offered victory to neither side. It has merely stopped. Lady Featherine has not resigned; nor has she declared a solution for her Logic Error. With its sides in eternal tie, we have chosen to dissolve the contracts that bind Lady [     ] to her seat, and release Her from the territory.” With one last lingering look at the gameboard, she turned away, preparing to depart. “Since there is no game, I will go as well. Please excuse me, Teacher.”

“You are excused.” The Unfathomable Witch waved her hand, and Lambdadelta curtsied as she dissolved into the blackness of the background, melting out of the territory, returning back to the Sea of Fragments to await further lessons. Now truly alone in the room, the Witch of Certainty leaned over the gameboard—the board which had now destroyed itself to the point of becoming unrecognizable, mere mangled logic and puzzle pieces grafted together in a facsimile of beauty.

Running her fingers along the jagged edges of it, the Ravenous Unfathomable chuckled to herself. Featherine was a damn fool; this was certainly the natural outcome of her blustering.

The witch snapped her fingers once, and the gameboard was enveloped in a whirlwind of gray ash. She had already solved it, naturally—so it was easy to reconstruct Featherine’s work from the inside out. The only difference between this and the original was intent. As the pieces rearranged themselves, the Great Witch mumbled to herself, blood-stained words as if weaving a spell of her own conviction:

As the Ravenous Witch of Absolute Certainty, I guarantee that Featherine cannot escape from this prison. This is certainly your curtain call. 


	2. Genesis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...for every seed must die before it grows.

For as long as she could remember—indeed, ever since her birth—Ouka had known darkness. It was a beast, not of blood and bone but intangible, immaterial. It was a wild, hollow, hungry thing. She knew darkness as closely as it knew her; pressed against her even through the shroud of the cradle, even through skin, even through love.

Furude Ouka knew darkness because it resided in her mother. It filled her to the brim and sometimes beyond, until it leaked into the room around her, dimming sun and smiles alike. It was a blanket of stillness, of frightening absence, as if her mother had suddenly left them to go someplace nobody could follow. As if the body was just a body, as empty as those buried below.

Mother’s touch was soft, and her voice warm; despite them, her eyes were anything but. She was elsewhere, usually; not in body but in spirit, departed for greener fields and warmer sun, as if her life here was little more than a hazy dream she did not need to commit to. Mother’s horns sat like a crown upon her head, bent around her skull like laurels, and in their wicked curve laid the barrier between them.

Ouka loved her mother. She was told that one ought to love one’s mother. That it was right and proper. So she obeyed and she loved her mother, even when it was difficult; when it felt like loving a sinkhole, like loving the final crushing wave that drained the breath from one’s lungs. She loved her mother, who was shackled by darkness, a sinking ship taking in water, and she hated wondering if Mother loved her back.

For a terribly long time, since before Ouka existed at all, Mother had been at war. She had been born a warrior, wet with blood and stained by righteous sin, and even with her battles far behind her, Mother remained a warrior.

She spoke little of the past. The tales were from Father’s mouth. He spoke of his wife as though she were of myth, a spellbinding hero from ancient sagas. She descended, out of this world, sword in hand and horns as a crown upon her head, and her people behind her like a queen’s cohort. But they did not bring war; Mother stilled the tide of blood, and by her wedding vows she conquered.

Perhaps, then, it was not the fight that consumed her so; rather, it was the kill that haunted Mother. It was Death she longed for in those far-away journeys she took inside her own head. She was not hungry for battle, for war, or victory; she longed to see Death with her own two eyes again, as closely as she could, and vow herself to its side instead of Father’s.

Even Ouka knew: the villagers would never view Mother’s kind as their own kin. That she was perhaps the only one straining herself so dearly just to love one of them. Perhaps there was a value in that. Or perhaps Ouka refused to step down out of a stubborn, perverted virtue, as if she could lift herself above her own birth and prove herself Good by demonstratively loving something inhuman.

The illusion broke swiftly, as Father was killed for loving her, drawn to his demise by Mother’s beauty. And Ouka knew: whether she loved Mother or not, it would not change a thing.

So she loved Mother anyway, and it was only them now. She could tell Mother took loss badly. That Mother was herself at a loss. But Mother said nothing, and did nothing, and closed herself up like a fan.

It was on the sweltering summer eve of Ouka’s sixteenth, when the river was dark like blood and the stars bright as Heaven, that the levee at last broke. Whatever resistance Mother had built for herself was torn apart by the flood, darkness spewing from every angle like an untamed ocean, more of it than a body could take, more of it than Mother could eat. She came to Ouka’s side, and a premonition colored her in Ouka’s eyes with dark swathes of blood and lymph before she even spoke. They stood together under the roofing, looking out into the courtyard, as the sky grayed over and Mother’s eyes did too, and she spoke.

She laid it all out: her grand thesis, a maddening exposé on the inner workings of truth and memory and the sin in mankind’s veins. As if she had realized, as if she was enlightened, she spoke with clarity and madness, in one breath manic and in the next muted, but never once did she stumble. The words were clear, so clear Ouka wished they would fall silent, clear like the sheen of a knife against her ribs.

Ouka loved her mother, but what Mother had found at the bottom of the well inside her heart was something too sinister for Ouka to love. There was a stain on her voice, of pure hatred and fury, that Ouka had never heard before. There was a rapture of contempt in Mother’s terrible thoughts, and she gave herself to it wholly, a rampage contained in merely a voice.

The sky split open with water and light, the summer downpour sick and warm, and as the air seemed itself electrified by the lightning above, Mother paced and spoke and ranted. She deliberated her points like a carver taking knife to wood, again and again, retreading old ground until the grooves were smooth and clean and _just so_.

Mother’s horns jutted like a crown from inside her head, clawed around her skull like a grip of laurels. Her eyes were black but ringed red. Her hands were paling on purple. She looked sick and sad and tired. Hair undone, all in a tangle, and her mannerisms erratic to match. She had delved into the depths of despair and had found truth at the bottom, and the pressure had crushed her lungs before she had a chance to swim back to the surface.

Finally, Ouka spoke, cutting into Mother’s fierce speech. Quietly, she asked: “Mother, can I help? What can I do?”

The sound of her voice froze Mother in her tracks, as if the rigor of death had already claimed her body while her spirit still lingered inside. And she started again from the top, laying out her thoughts, on humanity and sin and the intricacies of penance. Just when Ouka was on the verge of frustration with her, she realized what Mother was saying, and held her tongue.

There was a crime here, thick and heady in the air, pungent as blood. There was sin seeped into the soil, not just of this village, but of this world. There was a dirty scourge. And someone must be made responsible. And someone must be punished. And Ouka’s thoughts raced, ahead of her bastard-queen Mother, reaching that demon’s conclusion long before the audible words did.

The glint in Mother’s eyes was a familiar one, Ouka realized. That was the shine of hunger, that longing for Death that Mother nestled in her breast. It was the march towards the horizon, that inexorable draw to death, vivid Todestrieb moving her feet forward.

She would atone for this. She was prepared to shoulder the burden. Mother would beat the world asunder, strip it to its bare nakedness, and bathe the remains clean in her blood.

“Mother.”

Mother stilled. She listened.

“Must we bury you before you are happy?”

Mother’s funeral-frozen face twitched, and split, showing a smile at last.

Ouka pressed on: “We should be allowed life. We could be happy.”

“I have realized,” Mother said, barely choking down the fury she had earlier infused her words with (and what remained was nothing but a hollow apathy), “that there is no such thing as happiness. Not in a word such as  this. Not without penance.”

“And if a sinless world comes to pass?”

“Who am I to say? But this cannot continue. This world is one tainted. Humanity is a wretch that exists only to destroy itself, endlessly pushing the responsibility on others. This is a race that _cannot_ know of peace. If it did, it would not choose this.”

She paused, reflecting, for a long time, before continuing: “And, as such, it is a race that is unable to repent for its sins. Because it does not know, does not realize. Because it does not remember its sin in the first place. But I—I am not Man. I stand spectator. I spectate. And I realize.”

“Mother! You are human too.”

“I am not.”

Ouka rounded on her: “You are human!”

Mother remained calm. “I am not.”

“Solely for your horns? I’ll cut them from you, if that is what you want!”

Mother smiled and shook her head as though Ouka was being silly. “I am not Man. Though it warms my heart that you consider me so human. But you are my daughter; you are Furude Ouka. And you _must_ clear your eyes.”

Their roles reversed in that instant; now Ouka was pacing and ranting, speaking like she would be punished for silence, pressing forward despite Mother’s words. The shock had faded from her; indeed, without the initial race of fear, what Ouka now felt was akin to anger. This thing her mother had thought up was not only unfair to Mother—it was unfair to Ouka. It was unfair to Father—to Father’s death. Unfair!

It was abandonment, throwing Ouka to the wolves alone. Father was already dead. Mother’s will would leave Ouka a sole survivor. And yet Mother seemed so serene now, as if Ouka’s emotional ranting meant something more than what she knew. As if seeing her only daughter fight so boldly for her right to live was enough to make it so. As if she could almost, _almost_ believe her.

“Ouka.” She called the flood of words to a halt with a single word. “I cannot remain here. I am a different kind, and it is my responsibility to shoulder their sins.” And Ouka could hear, just from Mother’s tone, that anything she said or did could not change her heart.

They moved together, out into the rain, emerging from the awning like pilgrims taking on a new journey.

With the rain beating down upon her, Ouka felt unclean and electrified, dirty lightning inside her body. Mother sent her to the ritual equipment temple, described to her the tool she wanted, and went off alone.

Furude Ouka wore helplessness like a noose fastened by her birthright. Furude Ouka had been given a task of grave proportions, and it was like a slipstream, like a tide hidden beneath the river surface: impossible to resist, to stop herself from drifting along its will. Furude Ouka was clad in white and red and she opened the toolshed and she found what Mother wanted her to find.

Furude Ouka was a blood-mixed bastard of a devil and a human, and what that heady mix had made was war. She who had never tasted the battlefield’s bitter mud still knew its song deep in her blood. They had taught her to fight, to wield man-made metals like tools for her own liberation. She was no stranger to the weight of it in her hands. The art of bloodshed was in her legacy, was in her vocation, was in her first drop of mother’s milk.

She held the blade Mother had chosen, heavy in her hand, and walked. She walked in a haze, and she knew: if she could not stop this, if she could not turn Mother’s heart, this would destroy her. She also knew this: Mother’s mind did not change. Mother was incapable of it. She was as stubborn as she was fatalistic. As immovable as she was dark.

They met on the riverbank, where the rain had whipped the water into a torrential frenzy. The heart-vein of the village, sustaining life with clean water and healthy fish, had gorged itself on the rainfall until it became a thundering, deadly thing, and its bitter spray soaked Ouka’s already drenched legs.

One final plea: “How could one woman bear all the sins of all the world? How could a child slay and bury her own mother?”

The solitary walk had not tempered Ouka alone—her mother’s demeanor had softened as well. She had gained an ethereal quality, as though she were already dead. A humanity and presence she rarely had. The faint lines at her mouth deepened as she smiled, and for a heart-rending second, they were indoors by the fire and listening to the rain outside, Ouka curled into her mother’s lap, her mother’s hand combing through her hair.

She spoke, evenly, without a trace of the anger from before: “It is the role of a demon to bear the burden of all calamities that befall the human world. People live lost in sin, pushing their grief to others just to breathe. No one wants to bear the weight of sin. They will come to you next, my daughter, as they came for your father. I will accept that burden in your stead.”

“And then you’ll be happy?” Ouka said. “You’ll finally be happy?”

“If this wretched world can put down its arms—if the people can be free of the fate that forces them to doubt one another and fight—I will be happy.”

“Then I’ll make it so,” Ouka said. “If purity can truly only be attained through sacrifice, I’ll do as you say. I’ll make that beautiful world you sought. The future you envisioned, of unity and peace—I will bring that world upon this land. You will not fall in vain.”

Mother stood tall, her back straight, with all the dignity of a queen, her crown upon her head and her birthright in her veins. Her eyes were lit from inside her, by some supreme purpose, a cocktail of determination and defeatism blended into the picture of a deity. She was, at once, no longer human—it did not take a blade to make her so. She was already something else, and Ouka had never recognized it until now.

What was it? That hint of something more that haunted every line in her face, every flicker of her eyes. It was as though even Mother didn’t know it. As though even Mother was trying to find the truth.

Something lived in Mother, and its name may not be darkness after all, but _divinity_.

“Then I will believe in your words,” Mother said. She was drenched to the bone in cold rainwater, but she did not flinch, did not as much as tremble. “And I will surely return, once they have become truth. My daughter—I thank you. For all this time. Until the end, you were the only one to speak of me as a human.”

It had been sixteen of those wavering years, of wondering if Mother was a person at all, of wondering whether she was even capable of love. It felt sinful to even remember. To even entertain the thought. Now, looking at her mother, it felt dirty to speak human words at all.

When Mother bade her to act, she acted. When Mother told her to cut, she cut. To the last moment, Mother instructed her. She explained what she wanted Ouka to do. She laid out her will for her remains. And when she ordered Ouka to destroy her fully, Ouka destroyed. She ruined. She was wrist deep in the blood at once. She was hysterical, she was screaming, and even as she cried she destroyed, with blade and nails and thoughts.

For as long as she could remember—since the time of her birth—Ouka had somehow known. She had known darkness, spilling from her own blood, and she had known her story would not be a happy one. She had seen the augur of her ancestry, she had seen the void in Mother’s visage, and the fear in Father’s. She had known all along that she would not become Good. That she would burn out in the atmosphere, breaking her nails on bone, and become herself dirty with the blood her humanity demanded she bathe in.

There was no divinity here. There was only rain, and blood, and bone, and the river, and the offal of her mother’s corpse.

Only when the water ran red could she stop. Only when the river itself was blood, tainted by the viscera, washing clean the shrapnel. Ouka’s body was numb with cold and her head was numb with gore and everywhere she looked was divinity, the holiness of communion. Her clothes were stained dark with blood and lymph, her skin slick to the elbows with it.

Father was dead. Mother was dead. Furude Ouka would go to the villagers and announce what she had done. Why she had done it. And Mother would be canonized; not a saint, but a deity.

That was the only clear thought in her mind. That was the only thing she knew. She would make sure it was done. She would make sure Mother lingered here, that she watched over this place until her descendants, Ouka’s own descendants, finally made sense of all the blood and called it Good.


	3. Core Collapse

Eyes open.

CLARITY. That was the word for it. She was imbued with it. She had become it.

A body. Not a temple, but a prison. The temptress called Clarity bid her to shed that empty skin, and she obeyed. Tame and willing in the face of original sin. Tempered in the forge of her own desires. Clarity had her; SEIZED her; and in its throes she saw clearly that she had been RIGHT.

Eyes open. Wide. Wide enough to see the stitches holding the human world together.

How many years on solid ground? She could not remember. Then again, she could not forget what she never knew. One lifetime. That was all.

Her mind was a bottomless mire. Her mind was a foggy river. Her mind was a shipwreck staring through sunken windows to the murk beyond. But her eyes—the eyes that had loathed looking at the real world, eyes always all askance—were Clarity. For the first time in her lifetime, she could really, truly, SEE, and what she beheld with those glass eyes was vile.

The moment that blade struck her down, her mind had been torn from the body. She no longer saw through those cloudy-mirror-eyes. The lens was clean. It was GONE. And she could see damn well.

All mankind was one voice of chaos and all mankind was Death. All mankind was waist-deep in the sediment of sin, being pulled into the riverbed with each step forward. And when someone reached to their aid, it was inevitable: all mankind pulled too hard, and dragged their savior even deeper than themselves, if only to feel as though someone else was worse off. United, in some way, by their own desire for division. They would kill for it. GLADLY spill blood for status quo.

Name. What was her name again?

By her family: Hai-Ryūn. To her husband’s human ear: Hanyū. It’s not right. The names sat like poison on her tongue. Raw iron against her brain. She was beside herself and beyond herself. This was not who she had been. Those names were not her names.

Time raced by around her. Time progressed quickly. She was slow as molasses, watching the world rush by. And yet, she understood everything, she saw everything, and parsed it all on a moment’s notice. The world unfolded like madly blooming flowers and she saw every vein inside those petals. She knew it all at a glance. And she followed the plot with ease. On high.

Her daughter had offered her a new name. Her Third. The Third Name spread fear the moment Ouka spoke it. There was new religion draped over God’s carcass, woven by her daughter’s voice. There was new religion in the blood.

There had been sickness in the village. In mortal life, she had made cures. Man, in all their hatred, refused her.

THEN DIE, she had thought. FUCKING DIE.

And they had died. The blood ran more gladly than the river itself. She passed her cures to her daughter with contempt. Passed them on so that they may survive. That they not be lost. That her cures would survive the storm and someday be of use.

The medicines she had given Ouka became a weapon. The blood she had given Ouka was the new sacrament. To take her cure and be cured was new communion, and the sickness of that place withered, became holy. They would never take medicine from her, but accepted it from Ouka, and she supposed she should still be content with that.

Ouka used her mother’s last gift to climb. She sat at the top of the village. She was the demon-slayer, the life-bringer, and she was the priest of a new story. To be near her was to know salvation. To be near her was to be safe. She was revered.

Her tapestry was woven in the demon’s ichor, draped over its jutting ribs, and the people called it Good. It was Law. Ouka’s plan was vivid: she would call peace and Goodness using the hard hand of control. She would tame mankind’s demons with rules.

Ouka set her mother at the top, fixing her to wood, nailing her existence in place. Her body was strung up in parts, tethered together by stretched ligaments across the temple roof, and her finger bones were scripture. Her Third Name was the Only Name and they prayed. No one would forget. No one could. To forget, said Ouka, was to invite the demon. To forget was to succumb. And to forget was sacrilege. God is kind to those who remember, and merciless to those who forget. Our God is a vicious God, a deity and demon in one. Good to those who listen. Who respect. Our God is Good to those who OBEY.

The Third Name was Oyashiro. It tasted less bitter than Hai-Ryūn and less copper than Hanyū. The Third Name tasted like wine. It was smooth as honey. It dribbled from the people’s mouths like blood. There was fear in it. Love in it. God damn ANATHEMA in it.

She liked it.

In her life, her dreadful mortal life, she had killed. Rampaged like the rest of her kind. Ravaged. Had been a demon, vivid with evil, and relished in it. Enraptured by the rupture. Blood of her husband had her in a frenzy. Damn heretics didn’t know what they were killing. Didn’t know that her heart was alive only for one rule: blood for blood. Didn’t know she was as cruel as the rest. Blood of her husband had her boiled to her base instincts at last, unfettered. For REVENGE: anything.

They had taken Ouka from her and she had felt the fear, been tempered by it. Didn't fear death nearly as much as she feared Ouka being harmed. Blood of her husband had her rampaging; blood of her daughter beat the fight out of her in a single stroke. Tempered.

She shook the blood-fog from her mind and in that instant, the world became like a grand game. Orchestra to her conductor’s baton. She became lucid. In a way no living thing had ever been lucid before. She saw the rules bend before her and understood that she was participating in a cycle bigger than herself. A cycle she herself would continue in. Blood would have blood would have blood. Evil was in everyone. The fundamental truths of the world reared up before her eyes. All sacred and shit. Oyashiro was a damn fool but even she understood at once: it must end. Evil must out. Sin must be cleansed.

Temperance brought awareness; awareness brought apotheosis. Her evil heart calmed itself and knew what to do next.

Ouka had played liberator and she had liberated, striking down that demon, but it had been on command. She was unwilling, at first. Perhaps her piousness was nothing more than revenge. Casting her mother in stone and iron and shackling her to existence forever. She, who had at that time wanted nothing more than death. She who wanted to be gone. There were few insults more savage than to chain her memory here.

Or perhaps Ouka was doing good on her promise. Setting the stage for the eventual absolution. Perhaps this truly was the best way she knew. Perhaps that beast Oyashiro was too wounded by distrust to have faith in her own priestess.

Ironic as that may be.

In life, Oyashiro was empty. Her memories were empty. She felt like a puppet, a dummy full of straw. Like her body was just a body and nothing important was ever laid into it by God. Like she had never been given a heart. She lived and she was damn confused by everything around her. A senseless world she could barely remember being raised in. Like her childhood was someone else’s memories, or maybe a fake story transplanted into her brain. OTHER.

They could barely even see her. Like she was invisible. Like she was now: alien and foreign and existing on a separate plane.

Her entire life was that. Her entire life had been clouded by it. That big UNKNOWN, hunger for something ELSE ENTIRELY. She longed for things she could not even NAME. Her entire mortal lifetime was ONE MASSIVE QUESTION MARK.

She bit back that bitter breath and blinked herself calm. She found Ouka. She found Ouka with her thoughts, and her eyes followed. She found Ouka rolling dice.

Ouka had surely forgotten the talks they had, about magic and luck and dice-rolls and fate. The buildup of magic in a hand of dice had fascinated Oyashiro more than it had Ouka. The tension of magic in the air. The gamble. The miracle. Ouka had surely forgotten the eight.

Eight in a row. A miracle would be proven. This cursed family line Oyashiro had created could, given time, deliver a miracle. And she would have proof of that. She would need eight, priestesses all in a row, daughters of daughters. The eighth would prove the miracle. The eighth would electrify. Summon a thunderstorm of magic. A supernova. The magic in it could break the spell of death’s schism and pull Oyashiro back into the mortal world, to be seen and to see, and she would witness the miracle and call it Good.

The budding magical potential in a hand of un-rolled dice was nothing compared to the lightning-strike eighth 6 rolled in a row. If that could happen, surely Goodness could be realized too. Once her own bloodline brought a miracle that outstripped the dice in her own hand, Oyashiro would return. Even she would be happy to let the dice fall from her own hand then.

She had trusted Ouka with the gamble and wondered if Ouka remembered it.

Ouka rolled high. She won, every time that night, as Oyashiro watched. She slept. And she woke to worship, all over again.

Ouka had eyes that had seen divinity. She had a mouth that could describe it. It lived in her visage still, burnt like cattle-brand. Memory of first testament. She had eyes that had seen divinity and never forgot. She had seen the rampage, the devils’ run—the natural end-point of life in that cursed village, when sentience dissolved, when a man became nothing but a dog.

She held cures now. She was herself the cure. The change marked her mind.

In her youth, she had been terrorized by the sickness, as demons ran in human blood, a free-for-all massacre. She watched her village be torn apart. Forced herself to love a devil anyway. Opened her eyes wide to it. Damn wide to see the holiness inside.

Oyashiro had been the last of her kind. Ouka had stared her little eyes red and wet on that truth. She had known it as closely as one knows their name. That if she could only lift her sword-arm once, it would be over. That salvation lay one kill away. That salvation was willingly offered. Mother, and scapegoat.

It’s the kind of shit that makes God weep with pride.

She was all grown now. With her own marriage. Own child. She had a son. Time was a blur and he was a boy. Oyashiro turned away, and time became intangible. The first dice was a 1. 

Oyashiro could not remember Ouka’s birth. It seemed, like so many other memories, to have leaked out of her skull somewhere along the way. Oyashiro ran her fingers along the crack in her left horn, feeling the divot, dipping her finger inside her own head. As if in recognition of her touch, a dull thud of familiar pain greeted her.

It had hurt all the time when she was alive. A constant throbbing. Always. The always-ache had kept her awake and wishing she were dead at the same time. It was a constant companion, and she could not even remember how she got the wound in the first place.

But she could recall the method to the madness. It would flare alongside her confusion. When she attempted to remember. When she tried to solve that big UNKNOWN. Contemplating her own birth and existence and purpose would send her broken horn into a frenzy. Pump her full of pain until she ceased. Like prodding cattle. Like beating. Like punishment.

It had taught her from day zero that life was painful. That _being_ at all was suffering. It had taught her to stop thinking. SHE OBEYED.

Even now, she found it pounding, radiating, a buzzing in her skull. So she closed her eyes and she found Ouka and she thought to herself that maybe all she ever had to be was Mother. Was Oyashiro. Was GONE.

Ouka was sick with the world’s poisons and aged now. Older than her mother had ever been. Time had stuttered to natural pace around them as Oyashiro stepped into the room. She knew: no one could see her. No one would be able to see her unless a miracle occurred.

There was Ouka’s son, with his own wife. She was with child; a meaningless one-in, one-out transaction of life. A grandchild Ouka would not meet. There was only the three of them: Ouka’s husband went before her. But they were old and it was just. It was fair. It was human.

Oyashiro stood among them. If they knew there was God in that room, they didn’t flinch at it.

It felt to Oyashiro that a mere few years ago, Ouka had been sixteen and drenched and shaking. But it seemed her own grasp of time was poor. It seemed the schism between her and natural order was too large. That time took its liberties behind her back. That time simply did as time pleased. It had been DECADES since Ouka was young. A damn near ETERNITY.

She still had those eyes, that saw divinity in all dirt. Surely she saw her mother there, in the room, pale and thin as a shade on the wall. She smiled, at once full of contempt and relief, and said nothing at all. Her broken-glass eyes were loving and contrite in the same glance. Always the only one to see Oyashiro. The first and the last. The clock seemed to still. Time seemed to freeze. Oyashiro lingered, brushing her intangible hands through her daughter’s hair, wondering if any of this had any damn worth at all.

Oyashiro felt Ouka’s hand, her fingers worn with age and drawing a silent figure eight into her mother’s palm.

Then she left. As powerless in death as she had been in life. Shrugged to herself about it all. Shrugged about natural order. Life and death were untouchable. Bastions beyond her reach; and that was just and human. The first light of Furude was blown out, and Ouka’s first grandchild was a daughter.

 

CLARITY.

Oh, God, it is a wretched thing.

It’s all an eyes-open malady. A sickness of the seeing. A burden of knowing. Miasma vision. Like waves crushing themselves into the shore, an ebb and flow of consciousness and knowledge. An ebb and a flow of every evil thing. Every darkness dwelled beneath her feet and she knew it all so deeply. She knew it all, just as it knew her. Lore configured into her bones, by the earth that birthed her.

On high. She watched the cycle with impassive eyes. And she learned. She learned a great many things.

CHIEF KNOWLEDGE: Three Rules.

FIRST. She was not Man.

The people of the village lived vibrant lives in her wake. They took meals together, celebrated festivals together, rested together. Oyashiro required no food or drink. She did not even require sleep. Day by day, she found herself unable to connect with Man’s fits of emotion. Their joys and sorrows as alien to her as to the cicadas in the trees. She could not clearly remember if her own flesh had felt those fits.

She could not touch their world. Her hands passed through it. She was one already dead, a ghost and a god in the same breath, and their world was not for her hands.

SECOND. Man did not require her.

She took to wandering. The village moved as normal, with or without her. Humans prayed, and nobody heard. Oyashiro wondered: if she tried listening, could she?

Didn't try. They still pray. They thanked her for blessings she did not provide as if the forces of coincidence and serendipity were hers to command. Her continued presence seemed, at a glance, entirely superfluous.

THIRD. Be that as it may, she could not leave.

There was a border that stretched around this place. It was wide across in diameter. It was opaque mist.

Humans came and went through it. To some foggy world beyond. SHE ALONE was unable to cross. She followed the damn thing around its entire perimeter and it was a closed circle. Its touch was cold. Numbing. Impenetrable. Prison wall.

These Three Rules—it's the kind of shit that makes good men into beasts. Untouchable. Pacing the cage. Invisible. Unnecessarily tethered to the land. Animal instinct rearing up in protest. Better people have broken for less.

She watched humans live together and kill one another, always and inevitably. Damn shame in them. Ouka’s granddaughter was a spitting image, but her eyes could not see divinity. She followed the path her grandmother and father had set, like one blindfolded, and she did it faithfully. To be near her was to know peace. That much was still scripture.

Oyashiro hated her. Hated all her blood. Hated all her kind. Every wretched beast in the village. Oyashiro hated them, and in her hatred, dreamed of vengeance.

She couldn't tell herself from the scripture anymore. Her memories deleted themselves. Snake eating its own tail. She was informed by it. Molded to stone by it. That radiant pain blooming from her broken bone was quelled by it.

Well, she had enough hate in her for it. Had enough fury to play the part. She would be a vengeful god if that was what they wanted. It was as Ouka wrote it: God is good to those who OBEY.

They memorialized. Celebrated the anniversary of her death every year. Mourned the anniversary of her death every year. Warded off her wrath with it. Tempered her claws with worship. The respect they offered should save them, so said Ouka.

AND GOD OBEYS.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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	4. Schism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dice killing.

By the end of the first century, Oyashiro held contempt ever closer. She bared her teeth. Insolent humans and insolent prayers. They could not see her and she didn't WANT to be seen. Clan Furude lit candles and tempered her. Waited, and loved, and bid the village to be kind to their God. Lit candles and waited. And she obeyed.

If Heaven could grin, it would be all but sneering down upon her. It stretched. Infinite. Bigger than the world. She saw it from corner to corner, unfathomably massive. It extended far wider than her territory. It went on forever. While she was stuck in this prison. It was a sheet of painted paper stuck against the outside of her glass tank. It was an image imposed overtop the world. It was a mockery of freedom.

Years licked her heels as she paced the cage. Lion behind bars. The years nipped at her, a constant buzzing. Humanity was a bunch of gnats. Their worship a cloud of wasps. And she paced.

The second century taught her dissatisfaction.

There had to be more than this. There HAD to be. She was locked in. Could interact with nothing. Could do nothing but wait. Man, in their mortality, was permitted to escape. Was permitted to move on, in an endless cycle.

She had hoped for something similar. To be allowed something else. To be allowed a death.

Contempt bit deep. ENVY bit even deeper.

When the third century petered out, Oyashiro knew frustration like an old lover. She grew petty. Followed humans just to taunt them. Sat insolent atop their worship. As if her feet on their altar would change a thing. As if it would make them know her again.

Furude’s candles were mixed. Daughters had sons. She spent the fourth century all in contemplation. As if meditation would bring an enlightenment that death had not. She closed her eyes and she waited.

In the fifth century Oyashiro opened her eyes again. Clarity rushed to her. Vivid color and brutal understanding. And Clarity, that damn temptress, brought DESPAIR.

There was no way out. There was no way back. There was no way down, or up, or anywhere at all. She could not die. She was already one dead. She could not live. She rejected life itself. Doomed to damned existence. It was dark. Damn dark. What had she wanted? Not this. Surely not this. She didn't know her past self anymore. But surely even Oyashiro was not this cruel. This vengeful. Surely even Oyashiro would not wish this upon her.

Oh, god, oh God—the schism. It split her clean in half. The space between her mind and her body grew huge and caved in at the same time. Crumbled to dust, but it was stardust, elements as distant from one another as planets. Duality. Who was she? And Oyashiro?

The pain was still real. That damned cattle-prod punishment for thought. It seized her eagerly, and she grew to welcome it. Provoked it. Teased out the pain like pulling needle and thread through cloth. Slid it out of herself. Sutured herself until the pain was real.

She had a vision. She saw a feather. A white feather danced by her mind’s eye, iridescent in the light.

The first time the vision came to her, she had frozen. Paralyzed. Immobilized by the explosion of pain that followed. Her knees had buckled under it. As if the pain was a physical weight crushing down on her shoulders. No one had heard as she gripped her head and wailed. The gash in her horn was a schism, and it ran through her entire head, her entire self, her entire existence.

She toyed with the vision like one toys with a flame. Ran her finger through, close to the wick, quick but dangerous. Would have been beautiful if not for the punishment. Would have meant something if she was allowed to think about it.

She was addled and bloated. Drunk on pain. Drunk on loneliness. Drowning in it.

By the ninth century she was ready to beg for it. There was a God in this world and it was NOT HER. There was something out there and it governed her life in ways she could not comprehend. And she was ready to get on her knees, kiss the hem of its robe, and beg.

For peace. For release. For obscurity. For death. For allies. For anything, just not this, oh, Lord—NOT THIS.

Roll the damn sixes. It would take eight. She counted obsessively. Could almost feel the dice cut into her own palms. The chain. Bring it forth. Whip her with the roots of her own family tree. Beat the hate out of her. Beat forgiveness back in.

Chain. Daughters. In a row. Their faces with those dull eyes that could neither see nor comprehend divinity. Their faces like white die-faces, six black holes cut into the meat. How many? How many was it? Oh, God—the air was electric.

The eighth child was a son. His face was a white die with a single gaping hole. A screaming void. A hollow face. All hope dragged into the slipstream. Black hole. The magic in the air dissipated. To wait. For another chain. He must begin anew. A boy. A son. A miracle narrowly avoided. A one.

In the tenth century, Oyashiro felt something break inside herself.

 

The wheels of Certainty spun for six additional centuries uncounted. It was beautifully abstract to the Creator Witch who governed it; all she need do was blink, and it passed. It was not so to her prisoner, and it was beginning to show. The star that had streaked down from heaven was dimming, tearing its own luster to shreds as it circled, an ouroboros of contempt.

Lady Featherine was ready to beg, but the Great Unfathomable would not hear it. Her eyes cradled the gameboard like beholding a beautiful bird in a cage; with condescending affection, joy mingling with pride, with contempt and delight both. She wrote its legend diligently, crafting its record like a faithful scribe. She had not yet thought of a title; but she supposed it may never need one. A tale of perpetuity need not be named; for it would never end, never rest on a shelf, and never be read by anyone but Her.

The surrender of the gameboard unto the Capital of Books had been a farce, of course. But even if some poor Witch or Inquisitor noticed the slip in the records, the Senate would hardly turn against its own; even less so would it pick a fight with the Ravenous Unfathomable. That was the order of the world, and should one attempt to challenge it, the Voracious Witch would have blood, would imbibe it like wine and litter the path with empty vessels.

Her eyes followed Lady Featherine’s path, round and round inside her cage. 1600 years was meager to a Creator, but Lady Featherine did not possess that fortitude any longer. She was no longer a Witch of any order. She was not even Man. She was beast.

Beasts do not contemplate the nature of suffering. A beast will learn to live in pain. That living in itself is painful is the first lesson a beast must swallow. And once learned, that lesson is the precise thing that prevents them from dispelling their suffering. It is the darkest form of complacency, but it is what allows nature to exist; only by learning tolerance for the pain of living can animals keep moving. Only by the cessation of thought. To a being that was once a Great Witch, it was akin to groveling face-down in mud, to eating waste and sediment; it was only the highest humiliation the Human world could offer.

Still, watching Featherine’s presence torment the gameboard was a spectacle like no other. Even the Great Lady of Absolute Certainty had not been able to predict with accuracy what would happen to it, once its Game Master was locked within. She had made attempts in the past, of course, experiments at the same move; guinea-pig games orchestrated in similar ways, but ultimately cut of different cloth. That much was becoming apparent. She supposed her style was just different from Featherine’s, in the end. Her simulation boards had been predictable, and their prisoner indeed tormented, but this was a different kind of hell—and to watch it unfold in its full glory was a spell like no other.

Lady Featherine had fallen and become indistinguishable from her own Pieces. Writing her into the story had been a simple thing, really; without her memories, without her personality, without even her appearance, she followed the script in a daze. Dragged along by its current to lap up the muddy water—dragged through the dark tide like she herself was nothing but driftwood and water-logged corpse-meat. She was discontent by it, slighted in some way she could not understand, but she joined the story’s flow and was drowned in the riptide.

It was a mere half-life; tortuous in its incomprehensible twists. It was clear in her eyes: she did not understand life. That lack of understanding made her fundamentally unable to accept life. She rejected life with all the force of all the darkness inside her, and it exploded forth like a geyser, all pitch black and scalding hot. She took death into herself willingly, because her base instincts were not Human; because somewhere deep inside herself she had always known that she belonged to a different world. That she could not accept the life written for her by the Unfathomable; that she was somehow wing-clipped. Without her memory disk, she could not resolve this problem; and the answer created in that half-consciousness was Death. A quite Human response to an inhuman condition. And the gameboard moved around her, Pieces moved by her hand, even now—and she demanded it bring Death.

The murder of the Piece Featherine had wrought interesting results, unprecedented in the trial boards Lady [     ] had toyed with. The Unfathomable knew she would not die; she was not a true Piece, and as such would not be permitted to leave the gameboard.  She remained, a vestige of herself, an even weaker flame than her Piece manifestation had been. A lace curtain in the wind, transparent and helplessly moved by the currents around her. Pulled by the slipstream of her own lore, she toiled away inside a circle of Hell she herself had written. The rules were her own; the new Game Master was merely maintaining them. Lady Featherine had written spectacularly specific magical conditions for her setting, and even after 1600 years, they had not been fulfilled. 

The Unfathomable gazed down with mild curiosity, watching a mouse navigate a maze with no exit. And Lady Featherine began counting again—as if that was not the very thing making her existence insufferable. The last vestige of sensate being in her; the fatal flaw that made her not a mere beast, but a self-destructive slave to beasthood. To count again was to reach back toward her own sentience; it was driving away the beast who could live this way. It was defiance by way of self-harm. She would rather ruin herself than adapt.

Lady Featherine had always been stubborn like that.

Let her count. Let her spiral. Her miracle cannot occur. It is certain. It is certain.

Haha. Hahaha.

Yeah, she was fucking sorry. She was, in the end, just A DAMN FOOL.

never been anything but.

The schism cut deep and all fucking gentle-like through her marrow. Like being loved to the bone. Apart. Felt like she knew it inside her own skin. Familiarity in the fracture. Darkest affection.

She's sorry. She's sorry. She's sorry. But the face is so blank. Devoid of miracle. The face is so empty. The face has been carved black and hollow. Oh, it hurts. DAMN MUCH. Like her own face split apart. A hole punched through.

Not like the world here had any worth to begin with. NOT A SINGLE BIT OF IT. Not like divinity dwelled in any physical space. NOT A SPECK.

but god she is so alone.

Felt like being torn apart. Time still nipped at her. Time cleaned her bones like maggots and flies. TIME RUINED HER. All gentle-like. Licked down to the bone. Like being kissed apart. Pitch-black caress of decay. Every second was an eternal condemnation. Every minute a swarm of corpse flies. Every year was a new pair of hands, pulling layers of skin and fat and muscle away, sloughing her entirety off of her core—alabaster bone framework picked clean at last.

Ten made one. Ten decades made one century. Ten centuries made one millennium. Ten made a thousand. How long had it been since she stopped counting? His long would it be till she could stop again? Till she was done? Would it be a thousand more? A million more? Billion? Quadrillion? Would the universe cave and collapse around her?

No fucking face. Not like she had one either though. None of them were looking too good.

Ten years. One decade. Ten decades—

One century. She counted it on her fingers. Wanted to tear the nails from their beds when she did. This wasn't her fucking body.

TWO. Why can't she leave? There was no wall. Just a mist. Just a nothing. Just. JUST A PRISON. a punishment. WAS IT GOOD? Was it Just? WAS THIS HOLY RETRIBUTION? Is that it? SHE’S SORRY. what did she do?

Third century. She did the math. She was doing the math. Cutting averages. Lifespans. Memorized how long it took for a child to grow up and have its own child. Added everything together. Knew how many years she had ahead. Even if the chain didn't break, it was long. Even if it was perfect from here on out, it would be long.

Fourth. The schism cut Oyashiro from her hands. From her feet. From her skin and eyes. She was Other. She did not belong in a BODY. she did not belong. THE END. Her memories had always been a wild thing beyond her control. Time ate her alive. Surely the living her, the person she abandoned so long ago, had not wanted this. No one could want this.

FIVE. There's a schism in her head and it starts with the horn and it cuts right through and it divides her. And to see duality is to know divinity. To see the double-natured world is to see with God’s eyes. To see the duality in all things, in even the self, is to become yourself a god. She's fragmented and divided and dual but it's never felt this empty to be God. She is not who the scripture says she is. These are not gifts for her.

6\. Oh, Ouka. You did this. But she made you. It's not right. I made you. Damn shame. Shouldn't have had to sully her hands with Oyashiro’s blood. It's the kinda shit that makes God seem like a demon, Ouka. Ouka, with those eyes that saw divinity. The hands that could hold her mothers’. Ouka. Ouka. Ouka. She's sorry. She's so sorry. She's so alone. She was wrong. SO DAMN WRONG.

SEVEN. IT WILL NOT STOP. IT CAN NOT STOP. The world isn't BUILT for it to STOP. The world isn't that kind of place. Isn't made for it. Would be unreasonable to ask. Just stop thinking. Living is pain. Living is suffering. Living at all is horrible. Existence is horrible. TO BE SENTIENT IS TO SUFFER.

Feather.

Eighth century. Was it all real-time? How long was a minute? How long was a breath really? Was this natural? Was this a lifespan? Do they have faces? Who am I? Are you still holding those dice? Roll them again. I need a lullaby. Make it a sad one.

Oh, nine. The addition…how much in total?

Two thousand five hundred years since death.

Please, god.

Humans were so fragile. So pitiful. There was no such thing as pure evil. To think such things was humanity’s domain. There was good and evil in them all. It was all a tragedy. She wished it had never come to this. This was not an evil creature. It was an animal. It followed its own programming. It was not evil or good. It was both. It was duality. Man could not see his own duality. But God saw. And God felt pity. Compassion. Motherhood.

Oyashiro was in the room with Furude Saiko. Was right there watching. Saiko was the seventh in her chain. Oyashiro didn't know what she would do if Saiko didn't produce her a miracle.

The child was born. Oyashiro felt her heart knot in a way it hadn't in over two thousand years. Like how it quaked for Ouka’s birth. How it trembled with awe and affection to see her.

Sneering Heaven has found mercy. Oyashiro’s heart shook with it. Here before her eyes: the eighth six in a row. The daughter finally delivered, two and a half millennia after Ouka’s promise.

And just for a second, after settling against her mother’s chest, the babe seemed to behold God, in all her divinity and disgrace.


	5. Nova

Her name is Furude Rika. She is healthy, and in her tiny fist she holds a miracle.

God’s never seen a star this close in orbit.

Her parents don't know, but Oyashiro watches over her like a third guardian. She's always near. Rika’s line of sight is a tether, a length of rope thrown into the sea, and it fixes Oyashiro in place. Gives her root.

Rika sees Oyashiro as much as she sees her birth parents. They don't see it, but to Rika, there are always three faces peering down at her. Three voices. While her birth parents get well-deserved sleep, Oyashiro is still there. God doesn't sleep. But God can soothe a babe before it even begins to cry.

She's beautiful. Like all the darkness had conspired to be a leadup to this. Like the bitterness had orchestrated itself to make way for this sweetness. She's all the good of sunlight after a long winter. She's the rain after drought. She's the first flower of a new spring.

Oyashiro’s heart feels weighty. Not heavy; weighty. Like it's suddenly beating two, three, ten times as hard. Like it's trying to sledgehammer through her chest. There's a heft to every beat. It's full. Her heart is becoming full in a way it's not been full for millennia.

Furude Rika is small, but she won’t be for long. No matter how much Oyashiro digs her heels in and refuses time’s progress, Rika will eventually grow. But that merciless pace is good, too. It's human. It's got weight. She is small but she will unfold like a flower opening its petals, all in violets and blues, and Oyashiro is already proud.

They cannot touch. It's disappointing, but Rika gifts her a different boon instead. In the place of physicality, Oyashiro gains sensation.

The first time she truly is cognizant and comprehending of it, it threatens to break her. Indeed, it takes days for her to first realize, then understand, and finally appreciate—but there is a new pressure on her body, an invisible force exerted on her. And it's warm.

She looks at the babe and she realizes: this is the feeling of her swaddle. This is cloth wrap and mother’s warmth. This is the physical sensation of being cared for. Oyashiro doesn't know how and she doesn't know why, but the too-real pressure and warmth on her skin is enough to quell her questions. She looks at Rika and how Saiko holds her, and she realizes she hasn't been held in so long.

It's not just touch. She's got scent, and taste. The three senses she's been missing for over two millennia are raw like open wounds, like exposed nerves, not yet hardened to the world—but it is a delightful kind of ache. She has soft edges of new senses, like a layer of skin peeled back to expose her insides to the world. She feels brand new. Reborn.

She has Rika’s touch, scent, and taste. And in turn, Rika has her eyes.

She looks almost just like Ouka. A spitting image of the Furude Clan. The perfect eighth. She is clear as glass and strong as iron. Eyes like marbles speckled with stardust, lit up from inside by the divinity that seized her cursed bloodline at last.

God's not the only one who thinks so. The village reveres her. She's a deity before she can stand. A queen before she can talk. They call her Oyashiro’s reincarnation. Oyashiro supposes that is close enough, that it will do (as she has long since lost faith in humanity’s imagination). It almost feels like praise—that they would think her wretched soul could ever reincarnate as something so beautiful.

Oyashiro knows Rika can hear her. But she keeps talking, keeps singing, just to make sure. Just to watch Rika’s eyes find her. Just to get her attention. To affirm it. She sings until she runs out of songs to sing, and then begins writing new ones. She makes a sound and Rika finds her, curious and wide aware. She remembers language as Rika learns it for the first time.

And it doesn't take long before Rika learns. She's one and a half and she's got it down pat: mama, papa, oya. Last one’s hard as hell to imitate, but everyone else is saying it, over and over. Does her sweet little best. Oyashiro knows it's a matter of time before the princess starts linking words together two and two, then starts telling everybody the incomprehensible: that God is here in person and sings to her every night.

Maybe it's selfish. But when she sees Rika fuss because her mother sings her the wrong song, because her mother doesn't know the right one, Oyashiro feels better. She feels just a little better, after two thousand six hundred years. Feels just a little less raw.

It could be worse. It would have been easy, but too far even for her, to introduce herself as Mother. She let Furude Saiko keep that to herself. She would be Oyashiro, and it would take time before Rika could get all the syllables right—but maybe that in itself had some meaning to it.

Rika is running around like a hurricane and trips over her own feet. She tumbles like only kids know how; positively unharmed, but shocked into tears regardless. Saiko and Oyashiro are in a race to check on her, and Oyashiro’s there first, but—

Her hands pass right through. She can feel Rika’s tears on her cheeks but her own hands can't feel a thing. Saiko scoops her up and comforts her and she feels fingernails in her palms. Feels the clench in her jaw and her mother’s kiss on her forehead.

She cannot have touch.

But! But she still owns her songs. So she cannot touch Rika, but she can be heard and seen. She has nothing but song, night after night, as Rika drifts to sleep next to her. Nothing but song and blessing. It's weird to finally bless something after millennia of hatred, but if anything deserved to be blessed, it's this child.

Rika experiences new things. She has likes and she has dislikes. It's thrilling to see that her tastes are not the same as Oyashiro’s. Affirms them both as separate individual people—and the very medium of their senses draws them back together. The lines are blurry in sight and touch. Like walking together in one body.

Taste is different. Rika likes sharp flavors, spicy flavors. She's not old enough to appreciate bitter but Oyashiro has a hunch she'll grow to like bitter too.

Oyashiro looks forward to dessert and snack time more. She likes the savory, the sweet, the mild. She doesn't know how Rika can stand the harsh flavors. But the girl is all-eating. That's good. She’ll grow strong, live strong.

Rika is using full sentences before she knows it. She’s learned words for all her feelings and she’s got a real nice grasp on her syllables and she’s telling everyone: Oyashiro-sama is here. Oyashiro-sama is with her. She points, and gets frustrated, because it seems like the adults are just humoring her, like they don’t see what she sees, like they think she’s lying.

Oyashiro tries to explain. That they can’t see her like Rika can. That it’s because Rika is special; she isn’t lying, she is privy to information beyond the grasp of humans. And Rika understands, but she’s not happy about it, and it’s obvious that she’s sulking about it for the rest of the day. Oyashiro learns that Rika is sensitive to feeling ignored and doubted.

The years pass, and Oyashiro finds herself thinking that Onigafuchi is a lovely place. And then she remembers: it’s Hinamizawa. And she feels a little bit silly for getting her memories mixed up, but the anger in it is gone. She will overwrite the old memory. She smiles and sings songs and tells stories and the sun is sweet, the weather is kind, the river is calm.

She follows Rika to school. It’s funny—Oyashiro feels more apprehensive than Rika seems. Rika is six years old and she’s all confidence, all outgoing. She is adored by her village and in turn she adores her village. She sits in the classroom on her first day and she’s buzzing with excitement. She’s seizing the world in both of her hands and even Oyashiro can’t be sullen when she sees Rika like this.

Even on the second day, when Rika says, “I wanna go by myself!”—Oyashiro can only laugh and usher her onward. She spends the day alone, but peacefully alone, waiting in the fields beyond the school. She can see the building from here. She has this illusion in her head that maybe Rika will need her, and she’ll dash in like a hero, vanquish any threat. But it’s elementary school, and nothing happens, and the grass is long and the cicadas are loud and Oyashiro thinks everything is beautiful.

Rika finishes her school day and meets Oyashiro in the field. She stands over her with her hands on her hips, beaming, proud to have gone the whole day alone.

“How was it?” Oyashiro inquires, knowing it is a matter of minutes before Rika’s mother arrives. “Are you getting along well?”

Rika nods vigorously. “I made a friend!”

“Is that so?”

“Her name is Satoko. I promised to play with her again tomorrow!” Rika is all energy, and she even does an excited little twirl, restless already for tomorrow to arrive. “Do you think Mother would let me bring an extra snack to share?”

Oyashiro stands up, because she sees Furude Saiko coming up the hill, because it’s time to go. She smiles at Rika. “Well, _I_ would,” she says, a little conspiratorially, as if it is their secret. “But you’ll have to ask _her_.”

She points, and Rika bounds off to her mother, grabbing her hands to tell her about everything that’s happened. Saiko smiles and is just as fond as Oyashiro and she tells Rika as much, and then she agrees to aid in Rika’s quest to curry her classmate’s favor. They go grocery shopping together before heading home. Oyashiro hangs back a little, because she’s used to it, but she is still delighted when she sees a villager offer Rika some candy. It’s sweet and refreshing and Oyashiro’s hands are warm, her heart is light, her thoughts are free.

 

 

Oyashiro learns how humans tell time. She learns the eras, the months, the days. It’s the year Shōwa 53 and she learns to read and write modern language. Rika has decided it’s okay for Oyashiro to join her in the classroom, as long as Oyashiro doesn’t distract her or—heaven forbid—try to help her cheat. So she stays and learn things. She stays and watches Rika excel. Watches her befriend her entire class, one by one.

That’s the thing about Rika: everyone likes her. She’s adorable and clever and precocious and Oyashiro is amazed at her endless enthusiasm. She’s proud. She’s heart-achingly fond. 

Rika eats lunch with her first new friend every day. Hōjō Satoko is lively, but it seems like Rika is the only one—bar Satoko’s own brother—who will sit with her. They share lunches and play cards and pretty quickly other kids want to play too. Rika lets them, as long as they’re nice—and Oyashiro can tell that Satoko resents her protection a little at first, favoring her brother’s, but her own need for companionship wins in the end and she takes everything Rika offers.

They become a unit; it’s always Rika and Satoko. They play in the fields and go to each other’s houses and have sleepovers. They play pranks on other kids and get in trouble with their teacher, but not _that_ much trouble, so they always commit another misdemeanor not too long after. Oyashiro tries to discourage Rika from her mischief, but it falls on deaf ears—and Oyashiro is pretty sure that if she were physical, she would already have been pranked dozens of times over.

Time seems to move faster the older Rika gets. A year passed in a flash, it’s Shōwa 54 and the month called June returns with a vengeance. Screaming insects and sticky sunlight haunts her at every turn, and she somehow can’t quite shake the feeling that something horrible will happen. Oyashiro sits with Rika outside the shrine, contemplating deeply, and her head retaliates with a vicious ache—one she hasn’t truly felt in a while, but a clear punishment for the attempt to understand her premonition.

What does she know? What has she forgotten?

She lives as if in a haze, barely drifting along, until night falls on the eve of the festival. For a while, she forgets everything—she takes her usual perch on the offertory box and cheers for Rika, so loud she would have been ashamed of herself if anyone had been able to hear. She watches over Rika as she plays with Satoko, and walks through throngs of people who cannot see her, and enjoys the smells and flavors of the festival. She wanders outside after Rika goes to bed, breathing the bright summer night air, and only several hours later does she remember the ominous feelings she has had.

That night, long after bedtime, Rika appears by the offertory box.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” Oyashiro calls, equal parts stern and bemused. If Rika’s mood was less troubled, she might have played along and given a lighthearted response, but as it is, she merely stares for a long time. And Oyashiro understands: something is quite wrong. “Rika?”

“A man died,” Rika says, chewing on the word as if it is something she doesn’t fully know how to grapple with. “And one was spirited away. They’re saying you did it. Everyone, everyone’s saying it was Oyashiro-sama’s curse. That they asked you to do it, and you did it.”

Oyashiro’s heart is in her throat, where it stops and sticks. Her horn gives a violent warning flash, and she says nothing.

“Everyone was excited about it,” Rika presses on. “They said Oyashiro-sama punished the dam supporters.”

“I couldn’t have,” Oyashiro says, and it is painfully obvious by Rika’s expression that it is the wrong thing to say. Oyashiro holds her head, and strains to think, and grits her teeth. “I—I don’t—I don’t curse people—”

Again, the wrong thing to say. She had mistaken Rika’s expression for accusatory anger, but the more she flounders to defend herself, the more it becomes obvious that Rika is afraid. Her fear cuts through both of them like a lance, and Oyashiro grasps for explanation, to reassure her friend, her daughter.

“I was watching your dance,” she says. “Remember? I was there. The entire time.”

Rika’s usually trusting expression is closed off. Her mouth is a thin line, her eyes are averted, and she sounds reluctant: “Do you promise?”

“Yes. Rika, I promise you. Believe me.”

The seconds pass slowly as the night drains summer’s warmth from the air around them. Oyashiro wants to beg, to ask forgiveness for something she’s sure she hasn’t done, if only to ensure that Rika will keep speaking with her—but before she can break and grovel, Rika shifts her weight.

“Okay,” she says. “I believe you.”

Oyashiro sits by Rika’s bedside until she is sound asleep, and even after that she lingers, staring out through the window at the dim night sky. The nagging premonition still bothers her—it says _this isn_ _’t over_ and it says _be on your guard_ and her cut horn says OBEY. OBEY, UNKNOWN, OBEY.

Oyashiro examines herself and prays she has told Rika the truth.

 

 

Something goes wrong in Shōwa 55. Rika is seven, and so is her best friend, Satoko.

They are too young, Oyashiro thinks, when she hears the news. They are too young. Rika and Satoko should have remained a duo, playing pranks and having sleepovers and sharing their snacks. But that June has other plans. That June comes mercilessly.

Perhaps Oyashiro should have been on edge for it; after all, the previous June had been foreboding enough to make her cattle-prod horn beat her back into submission. It was difficult to stay on edge, however, when Rika pulled her around, laughing, playing hide and seek in the woods, making her chase her through the fields.

She regrets it now. Regrets not paying more attention. She isn’t sure what she could have done, but the feeling that she did absolutely _nothing_ is haunting her.

Rika comes to her again, at night, by the offertory box.

“Oyashiro. The curse happened again,” she said. “They’re saying it was you. That you punished the Hōjō family. That they asked you to do it—and you did it—again.”

“Please trust me,” Oyashiro whispers.

“Satoko’s parents. They fell from a cliff.”

“I wasn’t there. You know I wasn’t there. You know I don’t leave the village.”

“And nobody knows where Satoko went either.”

“Rika, please—”

Rika’s eyes are big and wide with fear. Her face is pale. Her teeth chatter even though it’s warm out. Her hands are balled up in tiny fists and she looks at Oyashiro as if she’s begging.

For what, Oyashiro doesn’t know.

It is a day or so before Satoko’s stepfather is recovered. His waterlogged body is dragged from the river and his wife is not found. There is no sign of Satoko.

Rika paces a lot. Like she’s trying to wear a circle in the straw mats. She doesn’t yell, but she’s  sick with worry—she doesn’t get mad, but she gets quiet. She stops playing with her classmates, stops sharing snacks, stops having sleepovers. Everything goes dead silent in the classroom. In the village. In Rika’s house. Oyashiro doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know if she should say anything at all. Rika is withdrawn and depressed and doesn’t want to talk to anyone if Satoko isn’t there. Not even Satoko’s brother can get to her, and they sit silently instead, at separate desks, in separate mourning.

Satoko never comes back.

 

 

It is Shōwa 56 and festival season and Rika is crying. She’s crying like Oyashiro has never heard her cry before, she’s crying like Oyashiro never _wanted_ to hear her cry. She’s screamed herself hoarse but she’s still wailing, inconsolable, and Oyashiro curses her own intangibility. Rika sounds like a wounded animal, like her existence is made out of nothing but pain, like she’s just realized there’s never going to be an end to it.

This is where she gives up on Satoko ever returning. This is where she realizes: the world is pain, and will always be pain, and there’s no use in waiting for it to be anything but pain.

Rika’s father has died. They rushed him to the clinic earlier in the night, in harried words of abrupt heart failure—and there he died, mere minutes later.

Her mother cannot be found.

She is eight and it is the first time Oyashiro has found her truly inconsolable. No matter what Oyashiro says, the crying does not stop. By the end of the night, Rika’s eyes are red and her voice so broken she can barely speak and she is still sobbing quietly to herself. Eventually, she exhausts herself and falls asleep, but even her slumber isn’t easy.

She is awoken early that morning by news: that her mother’s shoes were found. That her mother’s suicide note was found. By that hungry mire, a water-grave, an abyssal farewell.

Rika leaves the house and Oyashiro doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t know if she should follow. It seems her words are only hurting Rika. It seems her presence is unwanted. But she wants so badly to do something. To help, somehow.

She waits outside the shrine.

At nightfall, Rika returns.

Her eyes are almost black in the low light. She has gone quiet. She says nothing for a very long time, as she gradually approaches the house. Oyashiro is sitting on the offertory and feels her heart seize in her chest, an atrophy of her heart and lungs that freezes her voice. A lump in her throat so pressing it is painful.

“Rika—”

“Did you lie to me?” Rika’s voice is ragged and low.

The words are a shard of ice and it’s coming for Oyashiro’s heart but she’s faster. She turns her own self to ice before she can be hurt. She remains calm. “What did you say?”

“You lied to me, didn’t you?”

Rika is staring right through her for the first time in years. Like her eyes can’t focus on Oyashiro’s face anymore. It’s the haze of tears and exhaustion, and Oyashiro knows that, but her empty stare is still unpleasant. Dark and hollow, the same way Rika’s chest has been carved. There’s blood in the air here, and it’s coming from Rika’s gouged heart, though her white shirt is still pristine.

Oyashiro beholds her for a long time. Finally, she speaks lowly: “You mean, about the curse?”

It doesn’t seem to please Rika that she understands. There are fresh tears in her blank eyes and she casts her gaze down at Oyashiro’s feet. “I wanted to trust you,” she says. “I _still_ wanted to—”

She takes a deep breath and it feels like a razor passing over Oyashiro’s face. “I _wanted to trust you_. And not just Satoko, even Father and Mother are—! You—… The curse is— _real_ , right? You’re the one who killed everyone, aren’t you? You were lying to me, the entire time—the entire time!”

The refusal is lodged in Oyashiro’s throat and she finds she can’t speak through the grim coldness that’s seized her. She wants to say no—that’s wrong—I didn’t do anything—but would Rika listen? At this point, at this time, would she believe her again? Would she accept the truth as truth?

“No,” she says, and her voice cracks into a mere whimper: “No, that isn’t true.”

Rika is crying again, wiping at her eyes, all tremble and sob, and she has cast Oyashiro out of her ruined heart. The door is closed and she barely manages to gasp out her condemnation: “You’re so cruel, Oyashiro-sama.”

 

 

Oyashiro keeps an eye on Rika from a distance. Rika doesn’t want to be near her anymore. When her eyes find Oyashiro she freezes up, full of dread, full of spite, full of wounds. She avoids Oyashiro, even knowing there is no way to truly avoid her. Oyashiro keeps her distance, but keeps her eyes on Rika all the same.

There’s a funeral, there’s mourning, and someone opens their home to Rika, and she accepts. Oyashiro stays in town with her, in a new house that isn’t their own. Oyashiro sits on the roof most days; she has not been invited inside. She has been rejected from Rika’s life. She has nowhere else to go. She holds her knees to her chest and lays her head down on her arms and she can feel the reassuring hugs Rika is receiving, can feel the softness of a new bed, can taste home-cooked meals that just barely miss the mark of being home to them.

This is not a Good place or time. Rika herself must be the miracle Oyashiro sought because her world is still ravaged and broken and unwelcoming and crushing.

Time slips by in unmeasured chunks. Oyashiro loses hours at a time. It’s how it’s always been, but it seems more pronounced now that she’s alone. It seems beyond her control when she’s alone like this. Time simply acts as it wants, with or without her approval. She doesn’t know how long a second is. Doesn’t know how long it takes to blink.

Oyashiro lets Rika out of her sight and suddenly can no longer find her. She searches all the rooms in the house, and in the time that takes, anxiety settles like a prickling blanket. Her throat is burning and she feels cold in her chest and pain in her lungs and she searches for Rika. Her tongue feels dry and the ache in her chest blooms like a flower, and panic sets in as she flits from place to place. Oyashiro grips at her stomach; she is not wounded, but she feels rent asunder, raw as a wound in Rika’s absence.

Rika isn’t in town; she isn’t at school; she isn’t in the fields where she used to play with her friends. The pain is fading, replaced with an empty numb, and Oyashiro can think more clearly. She trudges back towards the shrine, on some faint hope that maybe Rika has returned there, that maybe she wanted to see her again, that they could build a home again.

It is nothing but an abode for crows.

Oyashiro hears the birds before she sees them—bickering behind the offertory, feathers flying, a brawl for a meal.

She feels dread long before she reaches the box. She feels it from the moment she steps onto the shrine grounds. An anchor falls into the pit of her stomach and weighs her down. The birds are screaming, their hoarse voices a cacophony of hungry noise, and Oyashiro feels her innards seize at the sight of blood. It runs down the wooden patio, one syrupy tendril stretching itself into her field of vision as if tragedy is playing coy with her.

She approaches, the offertory box allows her passage, and she can’t think anymore. All Oyashiro can hear is a violent rush of blood to the head, like an ocean trapped inside her has been released, and her vision goes double as she sways on the spot.

She’s found Rika, but it’s more apt to say she’s found what’s _left_ of Rika. The scraps of someone else’s meal is being shared by the crows, and Oyashiro can’t breathe, she can’t think, she can’t live, she can’t—

There’s entrails and blood and all the soft offal of slaughter and it’s so heavy in the air. It’s so heavy in her lungs. It’s so heavy all around the shrine. The empty shrine. The dead shrine. The offertory box shields Rika’s body from a passerby but once she walked past it there was nothing to protect either of them, nothing to dignify Rika with a peaceful rest. Her body is split asunder, chest to navel, her eyes like glass her hands like porcelain her skin in ribbons, and Oyashiro does not have the touch needed to determine whether her flesh is still warm.

Something is dislodged deep inside of her.

This can’t happen. This can’t happen. This can’t happen.  
THIS ISN’T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN.

SHE HAS TO UNDO THIS.  
SHE HAS TO FIX THIS.  
SHE HAS TO SET IT RIGHT.

SHE IS SOMEONE  
**SHE IS SOMEONE WHO CAN UNDO THIS.**

Oyashiro feels like she might be torn in half. There’s a schism in her head and it cleaves her entire existence into pieces. There’s a searing pain that builds and builds and BUILDS and there’s so much blood and anathema and outright venom in it she can barely breathe. There’s a cacophony of feathers. There’s a melting pot of blood and bile and dripping toxins. There’s her horns, crescent moon around her face, and there’s the strings of the universe, ready to be plucked.

She forgets her own name when she reaches for them. Her hand fists about a clump of threads, like she’s spinning a skein of yarn, like she’s determined to destroy a harp. She’s blind when she touches the world-fibers, but her brain knows: **this cannot continue**.

What is her name? It isn’t important. But she feels it is different from what she thinks it is. She can’t remember what she thinks it is, but she feels the truth is different, that she has been wrong for an awfully long time. She reaches for the threads and her arm seems to unravel when she does, exposing layers of fat and muscle and bone, unwriting her form—then re-writing it, assembling her back together, all in the span of mere moments it takes her to seize the world by the innards.

She tightens her fist around the nature of the world and pulls as hard as she can and they give, they give, they give to her will. They bend and are pulled and it’s like pulling teeth, like pulling a rubber band, like pulling the sun from orbit, but she does it. She is the master of this world—she is God—her will is Law—she is its Creator! She is king! It is hers! _It is hers!_

All she can smell is blood. All she knows is decay. There are screaming birds and there’s offal and there’s the taste of bile in her mouth.

Rika is dead and she can hear screams but it’s likely her own, split into a million voices, an omniscient sorrow that warps her perceptions and drowns the entire world in its noise. She pulls, and pulls, and pulls, and the sound gets louder, the smell gets louder, the ache gets louder—and time itself drains the blood from her veins—time itself is a million hands on her skin—dragging their palms against her in reverie—in reverse—

 

 

And then there’s silence.

 

 

 

 

And then there is the sound of a newborn’s cry.


End file.
